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I have a buddy who plays this game and while I don't get it.....there are individual cards worth hundreds of dollars as well. There are lots of rare cards that do crazy things and can essentially help you load your deck and become invincible to an extent. He was actually just in a pretty big area wide tournament last weekend that he won and got some really rare cards. So just like everything, collectors and people that play the game drive up the prices of some of the stuff. (there are a lot of cards worth next to nothing on the filp side though!)

In addition to some of them being out of print, a lot of it is the collectible aspect. It's the same as baseball cards or action figures. The early cards were made in very short supply compared to most of the sets.

I started playing near the beginning when it first came out and still play to this day once in a blue moon. Mainly with the older stuff though as I have no interest in getting familiar with the new rules, new cards and new abilities.

If you want to waste some serious money start playing this game and it'll do the trick.

I think there are two parts to your question: What is the fascination? and Why is it so valuable?

There are lots of reasons why people are fascinated with it. First of all, it was the first truly successful collectible card game (if not the first one, period). It paved the way for all those that came after it. I've played several other collectible card games and none of them are anywhere in the ballpark of Magic. It's relatively easy to learn, yet can be incredibly complex. It's constantly expanding by adding new cards and gameplay mechanics, yet for the most part stays incredibly well balanced. Honestly, I think its creativity is underappreciated by the general public both on the design end and on the actual play end. If educators had any idea how much Magic promoted mathematical, creative, critical, and strategic thought and development, I think they would encourage it in schools (and honestly, even as someone at the top of my class, I learned new vocabulary from the lore aspect). It won an award from Mensa back in '94, and that was back when it was 1 basic set and not even play tested well.

Which brings me to the second question: Why is it so valuable? Honestly, only the first few sets (which were basically reprints of the first in greater quantity) are all that valuable. There are really two big reasons for this. The first is simply because Magic went on to become insanely popular and the first set was printed in a very low run compared to every set that came after. Automatically, that's going to make it more valuable from a simple collectible standpoint, especially the cards that continued to be popular and reprinted in future years. The second is that this first set was apparently not play tested to the degree future sets were and there were cards ("The Power Nine" and others) that proved to be just way, way overpowered, the likes of which hasn't really been seen since. These cards are still allowed in specific types of tournaments. Even though they're restricted (one per deck instead of four like usual cards), anyone who uses them effectively in a halfway descent deck is going to have a huge advantage.

I remember seeing a story on old Magic cards recently and afterwards I looked up some current prices on Alpha. After a few quick calculations, I deteremined that a full set of Alpha is most likely worth more than its weight in gold. Literally. If you ever owned any cards from Alpha, I highly recommend trying to find them as there are several individual cards that are worth thousands of dollars.

Magic is the one universal card game like it in my opinion. While tons of card games have come out in the past 20 years Magic is the only mainstay while other get hot for awhile and then fizzle. You can collect Magic for awhile and stop knowing that in 5 years it will still be going strong. I wish I knew that back in the day when I gave away all my cards! :-( I started playing again about 5 years ago. Its so much more fun as an adult.

Try buying a couple of starter decks and just mess around with it. It should only cost around $10-15 a piece and I even think that they sell them in battle packs to where it's one concept against another. It'll have every thing you need.

Now of course it's not going to be any great deck or any thing, but again just a little some thing get the feel of the game.

I don't know anything about those, but having just collected Redakai, I can tell you that some cards are almost impossible to get. It's luck of the draw. Someone else may have gotten multiples of a card that you just couldn't seem to get (despite the fact that you bought a million cards.)

I'm still lacking one critical card, I'm not about to buy a million packs until I finally get it. It's actually cheaper to just pay big money to a reseller.

Try buying a couple of starter decks and just mess around with it. It should only cost around $10-15 a piece and I even think that they sell them in battle packs to where it's one concept against another. It'll have every thing you need.

Now of course it's not going to be any great deck or any thing, but again just a little some thing get the feel of the game.

I've never played Redaki but I don't think Magic is the type of game where if you don't get some certain card you feel screwed. There are SO many different ways to win and different types of decks you can use strategy wise. Hell I'm in the process of making a turlting "wall" deck.

I wouldn't recommend any adult try to get into Magic seriously unless they find themselves frequently sitting around thinking "What am I going to do with all these piles of money?".

Honestly, during my group of friends latter years of regularly playing Magic, we probably spent more time designing decks and playing with proxies than we did with actual new cards. If you want a really good deck, it's way easier to design a deck you like and buy the necessary cards on the secondary market than it is to just buy a bunch of randomized packs and make a deck. Of course, I used to know people who where in a collective and they would just buy new sets by the boxes, but that's a whole 'nother level of dedication.

I've never played Redaki but I don't think Magic is the type of game where if you don't get some certain card you feel screwed. There are SO many different ways to win and different types of decks you can use strategy wise. Hell I'm in the process of making a turlting "wall" deck.

Sure, but you have to assume that a certain portion of players are also collectors who want everything. Who else would be paying so much for certain items? You don't need all the Redakai cards either. I don't even play the game, honestly. I'm just collecting the merchandise. Redakai is not popular, or the prices on certain cards would be to the moon. I'm glad it isn't. Getting them all is hard enough as it is.

Me and a bunch of friends used to play in high school. They played for years after, but I stopped because they would buy expensive powerful cards. I would get crushed and I didn't want to spend the money. I got out of it. A few years after college there of us decided to buy a starter deck and like two packs of boosters and we had to stick with them, no additional. We played some, but then World of Warcraft came out and that killed our playing of magic

Giving away three free months of World of Warcraft + copy of game. PM me for details.

Me and a bunch of friends used to play in high school. They played for years after, but I stopped because they would buy expensive powerful cards. I would get crushed and I didn't want to spend the money. I got out of it. A few years after college there of us decided to buy a starter deck and like two packs of boosters and we had to stick with them, no additional. We played some, but then World of Warcraft came out and that killed our playing of magic

To be fair, if somone put 15 dollars a month and a fraction of WoW playing time into Magic, it would probably be a pretty rewarding experience for them as well. If I could retroactively swap my last one or two years of time and money in WoW for half that time and money into Magic, I would probably take it. Magic's biggest drawback as an adult (in my opinion) is that it's just way too hard to invest time into it. (Well, I guess you could play Magic the Gathering: Online, but that idea has just never appealed to me for some reason)